Page 126 - women-in-love

or else long warden pipes of white clay, of which a sheaf was
provided.
‘Will you smoke?—cigarettes or pipe?’ asked Fraulein
prettily. There was a circle of people, Sir Joshua with his
eighteenth-century appearance, Gerald the amused, hand-
some young Englishman, Alexander tall and the handsome
politician, democratic and lucid, Hermione strange like a
long Cassandra, and the women lurid with colour, all du-
tifully smoking their long white pipes, and sitting in a
half-moon in the comfortable, soft-lighted drawing-room,
round the logs that flickered on the marble hearth.
The talk was very often political or sociological, and in-
teresting, curiously anarchistic. There was an accumulation
of powerful force in the room, powerful and destructive.
Everything seemed to be thrown into the melting pot, and
it seemed to Ursula they were all witches, helping the pot
to bubble. There was an elation and a satisfaction in it all,
but it was cruelly exhausting for the new-comers, this ruth-
less mental pressure, this powerful, consuming, destructive
mentality that emanated from Joshua and Hermione and
Birkin and dominated the rest.
But a sickness, a fearful nausea gathered possession of
Hermione. There was a lull in the talk, as it was arrested by
her unconscious but all-powerful will.
‘Salsie, won’t you play something?’ said Hermione,
breaking off completely. ‘Won’t somebody dance? Gudrun,
you will dance, won’t you? I wish you would. Anche tu, Pal-
estra, ballerai?—si, per piacere. You too, Ursula.’
Hermione rose and slowly pulled the gold-embroidered

126 Women in Love